Social marketing for nonprofits

July 13th, 2010 | News Next » |

To many nonprofit managers, marketing equals fundraising and nothing more. But your organization exists for more than just bringing in donations. By using social marketing methods, you can boost the effectiveness of services that are the reason your organization exists in the first place–to make a difference. Did you increase the number of people getting screened for prostate cancer? Do people now put their soda cans and plastic bottles in the recycling bin rather than the garbage can? Have youth become more active and likely to exercise regularly?

What does the social marketing mix look like, and how is it different from the Four Ps that commercial marketers use? Consider these eight elements:

1. Product
The social marketing product is not usually a tangible item, though it can be (e.g., condoms). Generally, social marketers are trying to sell a particular behavior. While you may be promoting a life-saving or life-improving practice, quite often social marketing behaviors are things that people don't particularly want to do—eat more fiber, conserve water, exercise, get a colonoscopy. To address this issue, use the same effective tools as commercial marketing to promote the product's benefits based on the target audience's core values to show them how using the product helps them become the person they want to be.

2. Price
While adopting the product may have a monetary cost, the more important price considerations are social and emotional costs. These might include the hassle factor of performing the behavior, time, embarrassment, deprivation of something they enjoy, fear of finding a medical problem, or social disapproval. The strategic issue here is to figure out how to reduce the price as much as possible and make it easy and stress-free to perform the behavior.

3. Place
How will you make the product available? In other words, how and where can people perform the behavior? The concept of aperture is relevant here; just like a camera's lens opens and shuts very quickly to let in the light when you take a picture, you have only a small window of opportunity to get your messages through to the target audience at a time and place they can act on it. Your potential participants will not go out of their way to look for your messages—you need to go to where they are and give them the opportunity to easily learn about the product and perform the behavior.

4. Promotion
Promotional approaches for social marketing do not differ much from those used by commercial marketers. However, one key difference may lie in the types of target audiences addressed by social marketing programs. Many are not the types of consumers that a for-profit business would even consider going after; they may be low-income, unable to speak English, difficult to find, and/or uninterested in making any changes in their lives. Social marketers may need to be very creative in the ways they promote their products to these hard-to-reach populations, such as those who are homeless, illegal immigrants, drug users, or sex workers.

And because of the inherent challenges faced by social marketing programs, I have added four more Ps to the social marketing mix

5. Publics
To be most effective when planning and managing a social marketing campaign, you must take into account all of the people who can affect the success of the program. This includes the external publics—the target audience, groups that influence the target audience, policymakers, the media, and others outside the organization. Just as importantly, nonprofit social marketers must involve their internal publics in the development and preparation for the program implementation. These are the people within your organization—everyone from your Board members and management staff who must approve your plans, down to the receptionist who answers the phones and needs to know what to do when someone calls in response to the campaign.

6. Partnership
Many social marketing issues are so big that one organization cannot address them alone. Potential partners include organizations (other nonprofits, government agencies and businesses) that have one or more of the following attributes: similar goals to yours, access to the target audience, credibility with the target audience, interest in sponsorship of your program, or resources that fill gaps in your organization's capabilities.

7. Policy
Governmental or organizational policies can act as a catalyst for social change on a large scale. When policies are put into place that provide an environment of support for a particular behavior, individuals are much more likely to sustain that behavior change. For example, workplace nonsmoking policies make it easier for smokers to quit by ensuring that they do not see others lighting up around them and removing those social cues to smoking.

8. Purse strings
Unlike businesses, many nonprofit organizations are not able to automatically set aside a certain percentage of their revenue for marketing activities. Social marketers must be creative and proactive in seeking funding for their campaigns from sources such as corporate partners, foundations, donations, and government agencies.

- Marketing Profs